


More Converts Than Reason

by iihappydaysii



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Sort Of, a little sad, discussion of sexuality, lots of talking, phil's parents pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 21:13:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13960134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iihappydaysii/pseuds/iihappydaysii
Summary: Dan and Phil go to visit the Lesters for Mother's Day and each have a talk with one of Phil's parents.





	More Converts Than Reason

“Hey boys!” Kath said, opening the door. “You made it.” She pulled Phil into a hug, and then moved onto Dan. She hugged him tight, and at first he stiffened, but then he just hugged back, holding on even tighter. He really was a sweet boy. She was happy her son had found someone  like him to spend his life with.

Kath stepped back and put a hand on his arm. Dan had dark circles under his eyes and he looked tired. Come to think of it, Phil looked a little tired too. 

“You boys have a long flight?” she asked.

“No, Mum. It was alright actually.”

“Oh…” Her eyes narrowed. “You just look a little tired.”

Dan cast a glance over at Phil, and Kath could see Phil’s eyes flicker in his direction and then shift back to her. 

“We’re fine, Kath,” Dan said.

But she knew her boys. They weren’t fine, and she wouldn’t push it now. They’d just gotten here after all, but she was a mum— _ their _ mum, in a way—so she’d eventually have to push. Eventually have to get down to what was going on, what had them looking like  _ that. _

“Come along boys,” she said. “Martyn and Corn are already here and I’ve made cakes.”

Once they were in the kitchen, Kath gave them both a mountain of cakes, which Phil devoured and Dan ate sparingly, picking at them and leaving behind much more than he ate.

“Are you not hungry, love?” Kath pointed to Dan’s plate with its half-eaten crumbled cakes.

“I guess not,” Dan said, a little flatly. “They’re really good though. Thank you.” He stood up from the table and flashed Kath a tense smile. “I’m going to use the toilet.”

Kath nodded at Dan and watched him leave, then she turned her attention to her son. “Philip, want to talk to me about what’s going on?”

Phil just sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what’s going on or you don’t know if you want to talk to me about it?” Kath sat down across from Phil at the table.

He shrugged. “Did you watch Dan’s most recent video?”

“Yes, dear. I did.”

“Well… what did you think?”

“It seems like that boy has a lot on his mind he’s trying to figure out.”

Phil nodded and picked at what was left of his cake. Apparently not wanting to eat Kath’s cakes was contagious. “He does, but that’s not… I mean it is. He just made a reference in there. I don’t know if you noticed it, but to like, I mean  _ technically  _ to me. This is kind of weird to talk about with you.”

_ Ah.  _ Now she knew what Phil was getting at. “You mean Dan saying he likes having sex.”

Phil put his hands over his face and let out a muffled. “Mum.”

“Were people… being pushy about the two of you again?”

Phil shook his head. “Not really. It was less about me and more about. The way he phrased it, Mum. It made it sound like he was having sex with a man.”

“Well, I sure hope he is.”

Phil dropped his hands away, his mouth fallen open. “ _ Mum _ .”

“I’m just saying.”

Phil shook his head. “Just a lot of really crude things were said about him online, where like he thinks people outside of our audience will see it. Like if you searched his name… some rude stuff came up and it just it brought him back to some dark places.”

Kath pursed her lips, thinking. She’d watched Dan’s video, and had even found that itself crude enough to crinkle her nose up at it a time or two. But it was probably a feeling brought on in part by knowing that the person Dan was talking about having sex with was her own son, and having that mentioned online for millions of people was a little unsettling. But, it didn’t matter. She always watched Dan’s videos, even if she didn’t always understand them. That’s what mums did.

“Did he not expect…”

“I don’t know, Mum. I think he did expect it, but there was just a difference between how he thought he’d feel and how he’d felt.”

Kath nodded. She understood that. “I’m sorry. It must be hard.”

“He’s just, you know…”

“I know.” Kath patted Phil’s hand. She knew how much Phil worried about Dan, and Kath worried about him too, and she worried about Phil, about his capacity to handle it sometimes. But she also knew he  _ could  _ and she also knew that there weren’t really any obstacles that the love these two boys had for each other couldn’t overcome. She’d watched it unfold almost impossibly over the last eight years. If Kath hadn’t been to begin with and she thinks she had, she’d become a converted believer in this very special thing the two of them had. 

“I’m sorry, child.” She smiled at him. “But I believe he’ll dig his way back out again, and in the meantime, we’re his family. We’ll just ply him with cakes and love and support along the way, yeah?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Mum.”

 

. . .

 

Nigel was trying and failing to move their sofa to the far wall, like Kath had asked him to last week, when he caught Dan passing by.

“Help me with this, kid, would you?” Nigel beckoned him over.

Dan startled, then stopped, looking over in Nigel’s direction. “Hmm?”

“Need help moving the couch. Getting too old for this,” Nigel said. “You know I threw my back out last month. Been getting that physical therapy.”

Dan walked over. He seemed to be moving a little slowly, like he had back troubles of his own. “Phil mentioned that. I’m sorry. How’s that been going?”

Nigel shrugged. “Could be worse, right? Could be dead.”

“Right… I’ll get this end, you get that end,” Dan said, his voice was a little flat.

Nigel just looked at him for a moment, then agreed. That was one thing he’d noticed about this boy. He was a natural leader. He’d take charge accidentally and just sweep everyone along with him. They’d butted heads a little over the years and it was always surrounding something like this. Dan picking up the check without thinking or Dan figuring out the best direction to go when they were all on holiday. Something where Nigel had felt a little pushed out of his position as leader of the pack, which was a silly and outdated thought anyway.

They moved the couch together, and then Nigel thanked Dan for his help. Dan nodded, then he pivoted like he was going to walk away. Suddenly, he turned back around to just sort of look at Nigel. 

Nigel looked back.

They were both pretty good at awkward silences, when it came to the other. He cared about Dan and maybe it was wrong of him, but he’d never quite figured out what to do with this man. This man that loved his son the way Nigel loved his wife. He had just never prepared himself for that dynamic at all, and always felt a little like he was playing catch up.

“Can I ask you something?” Dan said, sitting down on the couch they’d just moved, his words hurried but flat.

Nigel set his face very seriously. “What is it, son?”

Dan rubbed at the back of his neck. “I feel like I don’t know how to do it.”

“How to do what?”

He drew in a deep breath, then let it back out slowly through his nose. “Be a man.”

Nigel’s face scrunched up, his lips tipping into a frown. He sat down on the couch with Dan. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know… I just… I really admire you. I don’t know if you know that, but I do. I admire you as a man, as a father and a husband, and sometimes I feel like, you know, I have a dad, but it was different.” Dan looked down at his lap. “When I think of a good man, when I think of the kind of man I want to be, I think of you.”

Nigel felt himself getting choked up. He wasn’t a particularly emotional person, but he also wasn’t the kind of person who’d cram everything deep inside either. “Daniel… I, I’m not sure what to say… that means a lot. But I think you’re coming along quite nicely, if that’s something you say about a person and not a mince pie.”

Dan laughed. “I don’t know about that.”

Nigel turned in a little towards Dan. “You put food on the table, right?”

“Right, but—“

“Nah, no buts. You do. I know you never bring it up and we never bring it up, but son, I know what you’re worth financially. You’re a millionaire.”

Dan gave him a strange look, like this was definitely not where he thought the conversation was headed. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means something. It doesn’t mean everything. My point is… it’s a big deal, Dan. You work hard, you make money. You put food on the table, a roof over your heads.”

“Phil contributes just as much to—”

“That’s not the point, son. You got to be okay with being proud of yourself. You provide for your family.” Nigel put a fist to his chest. “Let yourself feel that sense of accomplishment. You take care of Phil, don’t you? You consider his needs? You support him and encourage him? You take time for him? Time for just the two of you? You take care of his needs, emotional and physical?”

Dan’s face went bright red. Nigel wasn’t  _ really  _ trying to make him uncomfortable, but he believed this was what needed to be said. 

“I… I mean, of course, I do. I try, at least,” Dan said.

“If I asked him right now, do you think he’d say you do?”

“Yeah, yeah I do.”

“Well, there you go. You sound like a good man to me, kid."

Dan let out a breath. “I mean that’s great and all, I guess, but it’s like… what kind of man, what kind of  _ person,  _ can’t just be honest? I mean, sometimes I feel like I’m hiding Phil, as if I’m embarrassed of what we are together and I’m not, so I tried, I tried to be more honest. But it’s still there—all the insults and the fear and the desperate desire to just be liked or, you know, in the absence of that,  _ normal.  _ And it’s like… it’s like being back on the playground again, or youth group at my grandma’s church. It’s just all still  _ there. _ So I just got scared and tried to run away from it… I did what I always do in situation like this. I avoided responsibility. I pushed it off on other people.”

“Well, you shouldn’t do that.”

Dan let out a tiny, high laugh. “Sounds so simple.”

“Nothing is simple. You’ll learn that in your old age.”

“I think I’m already beginning to pick up on it, but I’m not sure what to do with that information.”

Nigel looked at Dan, at this man, who he knew so fully and completely kept his son’s heart. He’d never pictured having to have conversations like this. He had two sons. He’d pictured pretty girls gossiping around the kitchen with Kath. Now, after all these years, he could see how flawed, how overly simplistic, that view of his family had been. He could honestly say now that he believed this, this real, unexpected life, was far better than the one he’d imagined for himself and his boys. 

“I’m going to tell you something, son, and it might hurt that image you have of me as the kind of man you want to be, but i’m more concerned about you right now than I am about what you think of me…” Nigel took a deep breath. “I wasn’t happy when Phil brought you home for the first time. I mean, the first time when I realized you weren’t just his friend.”

“I…I didn’t know that. I don’t think Phil knows that.”

“He doesn’t, and honestly, I’d rather keep it that way, but I also don’t think you should keep a secret from him. But if it helps, and I’m not sure it does, I’m very ashamed of how I felt back then.”

“Was it me or…”

“It wasn’t you. I mean, I’d always liked you. It was… being gay was different, even just when you and Phil were young. It wasn’t always legal, it felt dangerous and I wanted to protect my son from this boy who’d bring him into that lifestyle… and now, of course, I know that you shouldn’t call it a lifestyle and that you weren’t the first anyway.”

Dan bit his lip. “Right.”

“Son, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up—“

“It’s fine. When did you… how did you, um, come around?”

“You know there’s this American saying—I heard it at university and it just always stuck with me—‘time makes more converts than reason’. Honestly, I wish it was something that put me in a better light, but the reality is that I just got used to the idea that my son was in love with a man.”

“I guess I don’t see how… what does this have to do with—”

“Time makes more converts than reason, Daniel. You’ll be ready to tell the truth when you’re ready, and the world will be ready to listen when it’s ready. You’re smart and you can talk your way in and out of a lot of situations but you can’t talk or reason your way in and out of this. But sometimes, you just have to act like you’re ready for something even if you’re not.”

“Like you did?”

Nigel nodded. “And I’m not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I take care of my family and I love them, so I hope that still counts for something.” He let out of a breath. “I’m going to say one other thing and you can’t hold it against me?”

“Alright, what’s that?”

“I love you, Dan. I know we don’t talk a lot, certainly not as much as we should, but I love you like you were one of my own kids, and I’m proud of the man you are, especially the man you are to my son. I’m… well, I’m just bloody grateful for how you love him.”

Dan let out a breath and stared straight ahead. “It’s just… I don’t want to wait, you know? For time. I’m ready to be a better person  _ now _ .”

“I know, son.” He patted Dan on the knee. “Aren’t we all?”

 


End file.
